It appears that the UK is really moving towards a total surveillance state. Along with plans that we've already discussed to monitor all communications, it appears that you may not be able to buy a mobile phone without a passport and without registering your information in a national database. The reasoning, not surprisingly, is to try to keep tabs on terrorists who have been using prepaid phones that can't be traced easily back to their owners. Of course, what this really will do is create a much bigger nuisance for most (non-terrorist) residents, opening up potential privacy breaches all while doing almost nothing to slow down terrorist activity. That's because it won't be that difficult for terrorists to find other means of communication that don't require registration. It's really a shame to see countries give up the freedoms that made them great.

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AcidAUS writes "Last week's bust of the largest spam operation in the world has had no measurable impact on global spam volumes. The spam gang, known by authorities and security experts as HerbalKing, was responsible for one-third of all spam, the non-profit antispam research group Spamhaus said." The article speculates that the operators of HerbalKing simply passed on to associates the keys to the automated, 35,000-strong botnet, and the spam flow didn't miss a beat.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today's Wellington Grey comic says it all: "Warning: In Case of Terrorist attack, do not discard brain." He's selling posters. We need to put these up everywhere. I've just had a British Airways purser threaten to arrest me, my wife and baby because my wife endangered the plane by saying "bullshit" when confronted with a "safety measure," while complying with the measure. Warning: In Case of Terrorist attack, do not discard brain. (via Schneier)

isBandGeek() writes "With shocking disregard to their personal privacy, at least 10 people volunteered to release their entire medical records and DNA sequences in order to get their DNA decoded and analyzed. 'They include Steven Pinker, the prominent Harvard University psychologist and author, Esther Dyson, a trainee astronaut and Misha Angrist, an assistant professor at Duke University.. They have each donated a piece of skin to the project at Harvard University and agreed to have the results posted on the internet. The three are among the first 10 volunteers in the Personal Genome Project, a study at Harvard University Medical School aimed at challenging the conventional wisdom that the secrets of our genes are best kept to ourselves. The goal of the project is to speed medical research by dispensing with the elaborate precautions traditionally taken to protect the privacy of human subjects."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Remember a couple years ago, when you could hardly go a day without hearing some press story hyping up how the virtual world Second Life was the biggest thing since the internet itself? Those days went away pretty quickly once people noticed that the numbers Second Life was claiming weren't really representative of how many people were there, and all the brands that bought into the hype and jumped on the Second Life bandwagon started realizing that it didn't do much for them, as most of the folks in Second Life were there for the virtual sex and gambling, which the company has cracked down on.

However, apparently, there are still some folks using Second Life, and the company wants to let you know that as the financial crisis spreads around the world, the fundamentals of the economy in Second Life remain strong. Over the past few weeks, I've seen press announcements from plenty of tech companies trying to spin the financial crisis as a reason to write about their company, but this one might be the most ridiculous. It's not as if people are going to start moving money into Lindens any time soon as an investment vehicle.

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Like LED Throwies but more for halloween, these guys haunted the Evil Mad Science table at Maker Faire Austin:


Learn how to build one of these netherworldly light emitters here!

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dlpasco writes "Puzzllotto. The game, styled after titles such as Myst and Zork, will be available in the iPhone App Store later this week for $4.99. 10% of the sales revenue from the game will go to the Madagascar Fauna Group. At this point, only US citizens may participate in the contest but it has been stated that UL wishes to make future events world wide. 'Even though Puzzllotto represents a significant investment of engineering and legal resources, the company refuses to apply for patents on any invention. Instead, the company hopes to share its investment with other developers through its fundware.info site, while the company's ten employees hope Puzzllotto will raise enough money to capitalize bigger dreams.'" This could also be seen as a test for greed since the prize money will only start at $1,000 and will grow by $1,000 each day for 30 days at which point, if no one has solved it, the entire pot will be donated to charity.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Not only am I your friendly neighborhood Halloween blogger for MAKE and The Haunted Report I am also an avid Haunted House actor and promoter. So I thought today I would share my personal zombie makeup formula. The inspiration and clothes are mine, the make up and saran wrap ideas are the brainchild of Jeremy Tucker, Josh Adkins and Jason McClard of masnion of terror haunted house here in Austin.

Check out Aaron the cross dressing zombie and then MAKE your own variation.

Also don't forget our huge MAKE Halloween Contest!

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notthatwillsmith writes "Everyone's seen mods where someone super-cools a PC by submersing it in a non-conductive oil. It's a neat idea, but most components aren't designed to withstand a hot oil bath; after prolonged exposure materials break down and components begin to fail. Maximum PC has an exclusive hands-on, first look at the new Hardcore Computer Reactor, the first oil-cooled PC available for sale. Hardcore engineered the Reactor to withstand the oil, using space-age materials and proprietary oil. The Reactor's custom-manufactured motherboard, videocards, memory, and SSD drives are submersed in the oil, while the dry components sit outside the bulletproof tank. The motherboard lifts out of the oil bath on rails, giving you relatively easy access to components, and the overall design is simply jaw-dropping. Of course, we'd expect nothing less for a machine with a base price of $4000 that goes all the way up to $11k for a fully maxed out config."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

notthatwillsmith writes "Everyone's seen mods where someone super-cools a PC by submersing it in a non-conductive oil. It's a neat idea, but most components aren't designed to withstand a hot oil bath; after prolonged exposure materials break down and components begin to fail. Maximum PC has an exclusive hands-on, first look at the new Hardcore Computer Reactor, the first oil-cooled PC available for sale. Hardcore engineered the Reactor to withstand the oil, using space-age materials and proprietary oil. The Reactor's custom-manufactured motherboard, videocards, memory, and SSD drives are submersed in the oil, while the dry components sit outside the bulletproof tank. The motherboard lifts out of the oil bath on rails, giving you relatively easy access to components, and the overall design is simply jaw-dropping. Of course, we'd expect nothing less for a machine with a base price of $4000 that goes all the way up to $11k for a fully maxed out config."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There are a bunch of news stories showing up about how some scammers apparently were skimming some money from the online bank account of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. According to the report, the scammers probably only had account numbers and login info, and they didn't even realize from whom they were stealing. That said, what's more interesting is the government's response to the theft. Rather than suggesting banks should improve their security, the secretary of state for consumer affairs notes that an investigation is under way to see how the government can improve the security of the banking system. While it does seem quite rare for a government to take responsibility for problems, in this case, it seems a bit misplaced. It's not clear what role the government had in this scam whatsoever.

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IT IS VERY GOOD AND FRIGHTENING to be here on BOING BOING. As readers of my own, small, imitation of a blog already know, I am a longtime reader, and now, very humbly...

A FIRST TIME CALLER.

I AM ESPECIALLY GRATEFUL to be here, for indeed it was a BOING BOING post which first convinced me to descend from the airy heights of minor television renown and return to my ink-stained former life of writing big books of fake trivia.

FOR IT WAS CORY, via Ape-Lad, who first brought to my attention the COMPLETELY IMPLAUSIBLE, BUT DISTRESSINGLY REAL product known as DICK VAN PATTEN'S HOBO CHILI FOR DOGS.

TRUTH MAY BE STRANGER THAN FICTION, I wrote in my first book, but never as strange as lies. But now it seemed, truth was catching up.

AND SO it was Van Patten's sublimely unexpected, non-fictional food for hobo dogs (hobo dogs!) that convinced me the time had come for me to return and restock the pond of fact with falsehood, and produce MORE INFORMATION THAN YOU REQUIRE.

(AND DUE TO THE INCREDIBLE GRACIOUSNESS of Mr. Van Patten and his business partners, I am able to reproduce in my book not only the label for HOBO CHILI FOR DOGS, but also the label for CHINESE TAKE-OUT FOR DOGS. It is obvious that they take great care in making their pet food, so please reward their good humor and esprit de creative commons by visiting their website.)

AS I BLOG here from day to day, I will not always be as baldfaced as I am today about mentioning my book. But I will be touring around the country reading from it, often accompanied by JONATHAN COULTON, so I cannot promise that it will never come up.

BUT BEFORE I PART, I did want to share with you one image of me, accompanied by my book, and a bottle of Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Head Vodka.

FOR INDEED, here is another product that DOES IN FACT EXIST, though there is no rational explanation for it.

IT IS STRANGENESS INCARNATE, and like my book, it is filtered through diamonds.

THAT IS ALL.

PHOTO courtesy: Seth Olenick

(John Hodgman is guest blogger.)

Next Sunday, splatterpunk pioneer Clive Barker will show his original concept paintings for the film Midnight Meat Train and other work at Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago. Barker will be at the gallery from 2 to 5pm. Fortunately, the delightful work is also available for viewing online. Seen here, "Kiss Curl Carlotti" (24" x 24", oil on canvas).
Clive Barker's Midnight Meat Train art (Thanks, Dominic Paul Moore!)

Our Teresa spotted this mask for sale via Amazon that seems to have been, er, mislabeled. Click the image to see it larger.
Bush Jr Mask

UPDATE: They did it with the "Bush Celebrity Mask" too!

Creativity is least likely to strike in the afternoon, according to a survey that suggests office workers have little chance of solving problems after lunch. A poll of 1,426 people showed that a quarter of us stay up late when seeking inspiration. Taking a shower or just sitting in the bathroom proved to be a popular way of getting the creative juices flowing. The survey found that 10:04pm was the most creative time, while 4:33pm was the least. I'll think of something funny to write here later.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IT IS VERY GOOD AND FRIGHTENING to be here on BOING BOING. As readers of my own, small, imitation of a blog already know, I am a longtime reader, and now, very humbly...

A FIRST TIME CALLER.

I AM ESPECIALLY GRATEFUL to be here, for indeed it was a BOING BOING post which first convinced me to descend from the airy heights of minor television renown and return to my ink-stained former life of writing big books of fake trivia.

FOR IT WAS CORY, via Ape-Lad, who first brought to my attention the COMPLETELY IMPLAUSIBLE, BUT DISTRESSINGLY REAL product known as DICK VAN PATTEN'S HOBO CHILI FOR DOGS.

TRUTH MAY BE STRANGER THAN FICTION, I wrote in my first book, but never as strange as lies. But now it seemed, truth was catching up.

AND SO it was Van Patten's sublimely unexpected, non-fictional food for hobo dogs (hobo dogs!) that convinced me the time had come for me to return and restock the pond of fact with falsehood, and produce MORE INFORMATION THAN YOU REQUIRE.

(AND DUE TO THE INCREDIBLE GRACIOUSNESS of Mr. Van Patten and his business partners, I am able to reproduce in my book not only the label for HOBO CHILI FOR DOGS, but also the label for CHINESE TAKE-OUT FOR DOGS. It is obvious that they take great care in making their pet food, so please reward their good humor and esprit de creative commons by visiting their website.)

AS I BLOG here from day to day, I will not always be as baldfaced as I am today about mentioning my book. But I will be touring around the country reading from it, often accompanied by JONATHAN COULTON, so I cannot promise that it will never come up.

BUT BEFORE I PART, I did want to share with you one image of me, accompanied by my book, and a bottle of Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Head Vodka.

FOR INDEED, here is another product that DOES IN FACT EXIST, though there is no rational explanation for it.

IT IS STRANGENESS INCARNATE, and like my book, it is filtered through diamonds.

THAT IS ALL.

PHOTO courtesy: Seth Olenick

(John Hodgman is guest blogger.)

IT IS VERY GOOD AND FRIGHTENING to be here on BOING BOING. As readers of my own, small, imitation of a blog already know, I am a longtime reader, and now, very humbly...

A FIRST TIME CALLER.

I AM ESPECIALLY GRATEFUL to be here, for indeed it was a BOING BOING post which first convinced me to descend from the airy heights of minor television renown and return to my ink-stained former life of writing big books of fake trivia.

FOR IT WAS CORY, via Ape-Lad, who first brought to my attention the COMPLETELY IMPLAUSIBLE, BUT DISTRESSINGLY REAL product known as DICK VAN PATTEN'S HOBO CHILI FOR DOGS.

TRUTH MAY BE STRANGER THAN FICTION, I wrote in my first book, but never as strange as lies. But now it seemed, truth was catching up.

AND SO it was Van Patten's sublimely unexpected, non-fictional food for hobo dogs (hobo dogs!) that convinced me the time had come for me to return and restock the pond of fact with falsehood, and produce MORE INFORMATION THAN YOU REQUIRE.

(AND DUE TO THE INCREDIBLE GRACIOUSNESS of Mr. Van Patten and his business partners, I am able to reproduce in my book not only the label for HOBO CHILI FOR DOGS, but also the label for CHINESE TAKE-OUT FOR DOGS. It is obvious that they take great care in making their pet food, so please reward their good humor and esprit de creative commons by visiting their website.)

AS I BLOG here from day to day, I will not always be as baldfaced as I am today about mentioning my book. But I will be touring around the country reading from it, often accompanied by JONATHAN COULTON, so I cannot promise that it will never come up.

BUT BEFORE I PART, I did want to share with you one image of me, accompanied by my book, and a bottle of Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Head Vodka.

FOR INDEED, here is another product that DOES IN FACT EXIST, though there is no rational explanation for it.

IT IS STRANGENESS INCARNATE, and like my book, it is filtered through diamonds.

THAT IS ALL.

PHOTO courtesy: Seth Olenick

(John Hodgman is guest blogger.)

It's no secret that the RIAA is pushing quite hard to make ISPs responsible for policing the various content that traverses their networks or is hosted by their customers. However, if you want a perfect example of why this is a terrible idea, witness this story of a record label that purposely puts all its music online for free to download, who had its web host take down the sites for copyright infringement. Yes, the record label put the tracks online on purpose, to help promote the musicians on its label. Yet, the webhost took matters into its own hand, seeing the music being distributed for free, and shut the label's website down for copyright infringement.

Even better, is that when the record label's boss (who also happens to have written many of the songs that were pulled down) called the hosting firm, he was told that he needed to send the host the paperwork showing that the songs had the copyright registered to him. The only problem? There is no registration, because you don't need to register things with the copyright office (you can, and there are some advantages to doing so, but it's not a requirement). Instead, they had just put them under a Creative Commons license.

This is the sort of thing that will happen all the time if ISPs or webhosts or even online services like YouTube are told that they need to police copyright infringement proactively. They have no idea the real intentions of the content creators, and will inevitably pull down content that was put online for free on purpose, creating a bureaucratic mess for content creators who purposely adopt business models that embrace free file sharing. I can understand why the RIAA would like to hobble those business model innovators, but it doesn't explain why politicians and ISPs seem to want to help the RIAA out in this manner.

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With all the troubles I've been having with my Mac network, which thankfully (knock wood, praise Murphy, IANAL, my mother loves me, etc) seems to be cured, I haven't had much time to try out my new MSI Wind that arrived on Friday.

My attention is finally there, and now I'm reliving all the problems I had getting started with the Asus Eee PC 901, but unfortunately I don't remember how I worked around all of them. I do remember this -- Windows seems fine, once you get over all these hurdles, but until you do, your soul cries out Why oh why can't I just use a Mac! (Curse you Steve Jobs, give a Mac netbook please!!)

The latest one is that even though it's got a good wifi connection, it still keeps trying to connect through the 3G modem which is sitting in my travel bag while I'm working at home. I remember this problem well from the early Eee days, but it doesn't do it anymore. Somehow I must have figured out how to get it to stop doing this, or it stopped on its own. Arrgh.

Researchers in Colombia have found fossils of a snake that was more than 40 feet long and weighed over a ton. The paleontologists from the Florida Museum of Natural History say that the snake was a relative of the boa constrictor and slithered around 60 million years ago. From Science News:

At a site in northern Colombia, (paleontologist Jonathan) Bloch and his colleagues unearthed the partial remains of an ancient snake. Each of the dozen or so vertebrae in that body segment measured about 10 centimeters across. That’s about twice the width of the largest vertebra taken from a 6-meter–long, modern-day anaconda, another modern relative, Bloch notes.

None of the ribs included in the fossil are complete, but the size and curvature of the fragments that remain indicate that the snake “would have had trouble fitting though the door into your office,” he adds. The gargantuan fossils represent an as yet unnamed species.

Fossil Find May Document Largest Snake

Before and after Hurricane Ike

Now is the time for any ideas you have requiring millions of cubic yards of wood mulch. From the Houston Chronicle:

The city of Houston will sponsor a nationwide contest in hopes of recycling all of the 5.6 million cubic yards of tree waste cleaned up from households and front yards in the month since Hurricane Ike devastated the region.

The contest will pay $10,000, $5,000 and $2,500 for the top three ideas for how to best use the heaps of debris, which city officials have said would be enough to fill up the Astrodome nearly four times over. Proposals are due by the end of the month.

So far, the city has given about 700,000 cubic yards of wood waste to two companies that will turn it into mulch and compost for resale. But the sheer volume of debris far outstrips local market demand for recycling it.
...
The city is already considering a number of ways to use the waste, including for erosion control, boiler fuel and electric generation, but the mayor said he hopes others will come forward with large-scale possibilities.
...
"We want to come up with completely out-of-the-box concepts that can create new markets and scale up existing markets," said Cris Eugster, the mayor's chief officer for sustainable growth. "And we want something that can be implemented sooner rather than later."

Here's the official site to learn more and submit your idea. No, it's not a ton of money, and no, this isn't a huge chunk of the things needing recycling, but yes, it's a step in the right direction!

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schwit1 is just one of the massive flood of readers (and publications) writing to tell us about the recently declassified UK Ministry of Defense account of a supposed UFO sighting. Included are nineteen sightings between 1986 and 1992, with the most notable being a sighting in 1991 with a US Air Force pilot's first-hand account. Not that this lends an air of credibility to anything, just more papers with more words. "Almost 200 such files will be made available by the MoD over the next four years. [...] UFO expert and journalism lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, Dr David Clarke, said the documents would shed new light on relatively little-known sightings. He said some conspiracy theorists would already have decided that the release of the papers was a 'whitewash.' He added: 'Because the subject is bedevilled by charlatans and lunatics, it is career suicide to have your name associated with UFOs, which is a real pity. The National Archives are doing a fantastic job here. Everyone brings their own interpretation. Now you can look at the actual primary material — the stuff coming into the MoD every day — and make your own mind up.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We're happy to announce a brand spanking new icon set for sale over at the IconShoppe. It's called Disco, and it's a simple little set of disc-shaped icons that come in 7 colors, 3 sizes and 2 formats (GIF and PNG). It's also reasonably priced at just thirty-nine bucks.

The IconShoppe has been offering our hand-crafted web icons to go for designers and site owners. We're excited to finally add a new family to the shelves, with more to come in the coming months.

Also, going on sale today is Chameleon16, a TrueType pixel font for Mac and Windows that's inspired by the Chameleon family of color-changing icons we've been serving since 2005. Now at just $19 USD, Chameleon16 is now the cheapest way to get the Chameleon Original set of icons (plus alphanumeric characters!).

Looking to find great talent from a targeted audience of savvy web workers? Get 30% off the purchase price of a full-time or freelance job listing over at our partner, Authentic Jobs. Just enter the promotion code SIMPLE31 and immediately feel better about the crumbling economy. Offer ends October 31st. 100% satisfaction guaranteed.

With the McCain campaign upset at how the DMCA (which he voted for) makes YouTube take down videos even if they might not have infringing content, we wondered if he would go beyond asking YouTube for special treatment, and instead push to fix the DMCA. So far, the campaign has been pretty quiet on that issue, but Paul Alan Levy from Public Citizen has written a letter (pdf) to both campaigns, asking them to commit to having the DMCA reformed in a few significant ways once Congress is back in session.

The suggested changes would definitely be a big step in the right direction -- effectively moving the system from a "notice-and-takedown" system to a "notice-and-notice" system, which allows whoever posted any content to respond before it's taken down. It would also require a lot more openness in the process, including an initial notification to whoever uploaded the content, as opposed to just the service provider, and a system for making the takedown notices public. As it stands now, the system allows anyone to claim infringement and get the content taken down, without the original uploader or the public understanding why. The proposal would also make it easier to punish those who send false takedowns, which might help alleviate some of the problems. Somehow it seems unlikely that either campaign will get behind these proposals, but considering that they've both now seen how the DMCA has worked against them, it would be nice for them to make a concerted effort to fix it.

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brothke writes "There is a perception in both the private and government sector, that security, both physical and digital, is something you can buy. Witness the mammoth growth of airport security products following 9/11, and the sheer number of vendors at security conferences. With that, government officials and corporate executives often think you can simply buy products and magically get instant security by flipping on the switch. The reality is that security is not something you can buy; it is something you must get." Keep reading for the rest of Ben's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As at previous Faires, the editors of the magazine and blog got to give out Editor's Choice Blue Ribbons to our favorite makers. It's one of my favorite parts of the Faire experience. The makers are usually very excited to get a ribbon -- like having the prize Holstein at the State Fair.

As soon as I got mine, I headed off to the Xylocopa booth. Run by a husband and wife team from Tucson, Arizona, Xylocopa make amazing laser-cut jewelry, beads, home decor, and other creations from wood, paper, bone, shell.

By far, my favorite thing they do is the Young Mad Scientist alpha blocks, an eye-popping set of laser-cut wooden blocks with gorgeous art on them. The blocks sport words/images like G is for goggles, D is for dirigible, C is for caffeine. I know what *I'm* giving my nerd friends for Christmas!

[Maker Faire Editor's Choice winners will be announced soon.]

Mad Science Alphabet Blocks

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The Register is reporting that according to some reports, Interpol will soon be pushing for a world-wide facial recognition database at the borders of all member nations. "The UK already has airport gates equipped with such technology, intended to remove the need for a human border guard to check that a passenger's face matches the one recorded in his or her passport. According to the Guardian, Interpol database chief Mark Branchflower believes that his organization should set up a database of facial-recognition records to operate alongside its existing photo, fingerprint and DNA files."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Make: NYC Meeting 8 - Tuesday October 21st, 7:00 PM
While Christmas marketing has already thoroughly overran Thanksgiving and is fast approaching, we in makerland are gearing up for the greatest maker holiday of the year. Halloween is that special time when it's okay to be crazy, and odds are, the local police forces will not freak out as your creations run amok. It's also one of the few times of the year when you can dress yourself in fake wounds and not earn the ire of friends and loved ones. So we'll be taking advantage of that and giving an introductory course in the art of flesh wound creation using makeup.

Additionally, we'll have a presentation on things that can be done to clock work to make awesome creations chained to the lockstep march of time.

Show and Tell
Meet your fellow NYC Makers and show off your creations! Bring your gadgets, gizmos, sketches, ideas, anything you'd like to put in the spotlight. We encourage NYC Makers to collaborate on and discuss DIY projects. If you're planning to bring a project, drop us a note at meetings@makenyc.org.

If you'd like to attend we have plenty of space for everyone, but please RSVP!

Location:
NYC Resistor, 5th Floor (Google Map)
397 Bridge Street between Fulton Mall and Willoughby
Brooklyn, NY 11201

A/C/F to Jay St-Borough Hall
B/Q to Dekalb Avenue
M/R to Lawrence Street
2/3 to Hoyt Street

Make: NYC

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As we noted before there even was a lawsuit, a legal battle between Apple and Mac-clone maker Psystar could represent a key legal battle in determining the enforceability of certain provisions in an end user license agreement (EULA). And, indeed, the case was looking interesting, as Apple sued and Psystar hit back with antitrust charges. However, as a bunch of readers have sent in, it appears that the case has moved to "Alternative Dispute Resolution" (ADR). Basically, rather than going through a lawsuit, the two sides have agreed to first take it to an arbitrator, who may be able to work out a settlement. There are many, many good reasons to go this route (many of them have to do with saving money on the lawsuit), but the fear is that any settlement then isn't a binding legal precedent at all, and the actual results may even be kept secret. I can understand why both sides would do this, but it may deprive the world of a useful precedent.

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Boing Boing tv's UK-based music correspondent Russell Porter speaks with Ben Lamdin, founder of the nine-piece, alt-jazz ensemble Nostalgia 77 Octet (MySpace). Here's how one reviewer described their music:

Imagine Breakstra hanging with Cinematic Orchestra, or DJ Shadow teaming up with Elvin Jones and you're close to the sound of Nostalgia 77. A dark and stormy clash of breaks n' beats, moody bass lines, and cosmic jazz. Also includes the heavyweight cover of The White Stripes' "7 Nation Army". Hard to resist whether you're a hip-hop head, music lover, or jazz freak. For fans of Bonobo, Quantic, Cinematic Orchestra, Radio Citizen, Portishead, Polar Bear, Poets Of Rhythm, and Sleepwalker.

Link to Boing Boing tv blog post with instructions on how to subscribe to our daily video podcast. Direct MP4 Link here.

IMOVIO has launched a new cellphone-sized computer that is aimed at something similar to the subnotebook market. While it doesn't have 3G of its own, it does have a QWERTY keyboard, Wi-Fi, and a $175 price point. "It can connect to the Internet using a standard Wi-Fi connection, or it can use your cell phone's mobile broadband connection via Bluetooth. The company is currently pitching it to mobile network operators and retail stores. It's being compared to the ill-fated Palm Foleo. But the comparison doesn't work because the Foleo was Palm-phone only, didn't fit in a pocket and cost well over three times the price of the iKIT.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Seen above are magnetic structures on the surface of the sun, imaged by the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope, operated by the Institute for Solar Physics. This photo is one of a series of, er, hot photos of the sun recently posted to the always amazing Big Picture blog. The Sun at The Big Picture(Thanks, Mark Dery!)

I've been trying to track down a problem on my Mac-only network since Friday afternoon, and now have it narrowed down pretty well to one computer, my main desktop, that's got some kind of bug that makes it very slow at copying file to one other system, and vice versa.

Here's a schematic of a piece of the LAN.



Even so, copying files to any other computer on the network is just as fast as always. So you'd think it was the fault of the other computer, but evidence indicates otherwise. It can copy files to other computers quite quickly.

When I say slow, how slow is that? Well, it's very very slow. About 2MB per minute.

This computer just isn't working very well. I drew up the schematic and scanned it, but it took about 100 times as long as it usually does.

If this were a Windows machine I'd think it was infected.

BB pals Kirsten Anderson and Kenny Montana visited the Amsterdam studio of incredible painter Chris Berens. They made a short video of the visit as a teaser for Anderson's profile of Berens in the next issue of Hi-Fructose magazine. This was Anderson and Montana's first ever experiment with video. In fact, they didn't even own a camcorder until a week before they left for the Netherlands. I'm mightily impressed. Hi-Fructose Video: Studio visit with Chris Berens Pt. 1

Roll your own trick or treat masks with John McCain, Sarah Palin, and other scary political figures. "Rotten Monsters," From comics archivist Ethan Persoff.

At least, according to some wacked out wingnut flyer left on the dashboard of artist Laurenn McCubbinn, while her car was parked at a university campus. (Via Warren Ellis)

Hugh Pickens writes "Traditional peak power hours — the time during the day when power demand shoots up — run from 4 pm to 7 pm when air conditioning begins to ramp up and people start heading for malls and home but utilities are now seeing another peak power problem evolve with a second surge that runs from about 8 pm to 9 pm when people head toward their big screen TVs and home computers. 'It is [not] so much a peak as it is a plateau,' says Andrew Tang, senior director of the smart energy web at Pacific Gas & Electric. '8 pm is kind of a recent phenomenon.' Providing power during the peak hours is already a costly proposition because approximately 10 percent of the existing generating capacity only gets used about 50 hours a year: Most of the time, that expensive capital equipment sits idle waiting for a crisis. Efforts to reduce demand are already underway with TV manufacturers working to reduce the power consumption in LCD and plasma while Intel and PC manufacturers are cranking down computer power consumption. 'Without a doubt, there's demand,' for green PC's says Rick Chernick, CEO of HP partner Connecting Point' adding that the need to be green is especially noticeable among medical industry enterprise customers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It appears that someone in the RIAA's legal team discovered the word "vexatious" lately and now likes to use it. First, the RIAA declared lawyer Ray Beckerman vexatious, and now it's trying to pin the same word on a woman who is demanding a jury trial in her battle against the RIAA. We had written about this case back in August, where the woman used an innocent infringement defense to try to get the fines for file sharing decreased. That is, she admitted that she had shared the files, but rather than accepting the $750 to $150,000/per song fines that might entail, she claimed that she had no idea what she was doing was illegal, and that the law allows for such cases to be reduced to a $200/song fine.

The RIAA initially pushed back on this, but eventually relented and let the judge set a $7,400 total fine, thinking that the case was pretty much wrapped up. Except... there's the problem of the Jammie Thomas mistrial ruling, which added to a long list of rulings that claimed that "making available" files wasn't necessarily infringement. So, the woman in this case, Whitney Harper, is now pointing out that the number of files she's "guilty" of infringing should be reduced based on the Thomas ruling. She notes that while she made 37 songs available for download (hence the $7,400 fine), the RIAA only has evidence that six songs were downloaded. Thus, she believes the fine should be reduced to $1,200, and would like a jury to hear the case. You can understand why the RIAA might be frustrated, but considering how quickly it rushes out to tell other judges in ongoing cases whenever one judge rules in its favor, it seems only reasonable to have a court reconsider this case in light of the Thomas ruling.

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Hi folks, all the MAKE, CRAFT & Maker Faire teams are exhausted and traveling, here's Bill Murray mid-yoga session @ Maker Faire, thanks Bill!

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darthcamaro writes "How much is Linux worth today? That's a question the Linux Foundation is trying to answer in a new report expected to be released on Wednesday.

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Anonymous writes "Granted, FireFox 3.1 is just a beta and IE 8 is also in beta, but it looks like Microsoft has some ground to make up when it comes to browser performance. Given that Mozilla appears to be on a much faster cycle than Microsoft with this stuff, it's also possible that it could increase the gap even more before IE 8 is GA, no?"

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Pokiespout made this giant horror head mask for this year's Halloween costume. You can see pictures of him wearing it and the rest of his costume in the comments to his Instructable. Yeesh, look at those hands!

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Last month, we wrote about a judge allowing Kentucky's governor to seize 141 domain names that were somehow associated with gambling sites under a bizarre interpretation of Kentucky law. Pretty much everyone involved admits that this is just Kentucky's governor protecting local gambling establishments who supported him in the election. No one is even hiding the fact that this is purely about protecting the governor's political supporters from any sort of competition.

However, what's scary is in how the seizure is incredibly broad and far-reaching. None of the sites are based in Kentucky. Many of the sites are nothing more than holding pages, rather than actual online casinos. And, the law itself interprets these sites as "illegal gambling devices" which seems like a big stretch. There was some pushback, as people explained to the judge what an incredibly bad precedent this ruling would set -- as it would effectively allow any local law to be used to take possession of any website.

Apparently, the judge doesn't care. Late last week, the judge upheld the original ruling, giving one small out to the various sites. If they implement filters that block access to any IP address in Kentucky, they can keep their domain names. That's backwards. It shouldn't be the responsibility of a website that is just online to use geocoding techniques to comply with every single local law. If that were the case, the internet would ground to a halt, as any website would face so many different liabilities from so many different jurisdictions to make it impossible to comply -- and in each lack of compliance, face a potential seizure of the domain name. This is a bad ruling by any stretch of the imagination, made even more bizarre by the judge's unilateral ruling before a hearing was even held. The whole thing sounds quite questionable, and hopefully will be dumped on appeal.

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Banjo player Eddie Adcock recently had brain surgery where surgeons installed deep brain stimulator electrodes to control a tremor in his right hand. Patients are sometimes kept awake during brain surgery to interact with the surgeon and help guide the procedure. In Adcock's case, he played the banjo as the surgeon worked. From Eddie and Martha Adcock's site:

Now you can truly call Eddie Adcock the Bionic Banjo Player --and don't forget Gearhead Guitarist-- as he recovers from some remarkable brain surgeries to control a right-hand tremor.

The three-part surgery, termed Deep Brain Stimulation, involved implantation of electrodes into the brain as well as insertion of a palm-sized battery-powered generator within the chest wall, plus lead wires to connect the two. The technologically-advanced procedure was performed in multiple stages over the month of August in Nashville, Tennessee, at Vanderbilt Medical Center, a teaching and research hospital which is a world leader in neurological studies and surgeries.

Those neurosurgeons were eager to operate on Eddie, with his life-long high level of musical accomplishment and the unique requirements related to his fine motor skills. During the brain-implantation stage of the surgery, he was kept conscious in order to be able to play his Deering GoodTime banjo and assist the team of surgeons in directing the fine-tuning of their placement of electrodes in the brain -- an operating-room 'first'.

According to Eddie, "I came up in music the hard way and learned to be a trouper fast. Some of those early days were pretty rough, and I've been stomped, cut and kicked; but I never went through hell like this -- it was the most painful thing I've ever endured. And it was risky. But I did it for a reason: I'm looking forward to being able to play music the way I did years ago prior to getting this tremor. It means that much to me. I'm far from being done!"

Brain surgery and the banjo player (Thanks, Sean Ness!)

Scott Jaschik writes "A new study documents just how much money colleges are spending on enforcing P2P rules through software license fees, hardware, and other costs. Many private universities are spending more than $100,000 a year — a major allocation of funds. An article in Inside Higher Ed explains the study and its findings."

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The Knight News Challenge is a program to fund tech innovation in relationship to journalism. Every year they request proposals for a share of $5 million in grant money, every time around I try to think of something that fits their guidelines, but the third requirement always stumps me. Here's the list:

1. Use or create digital, open-source technology as the code base.

2. Serve the public interest.

3. Benefit one or more specific geographic communities.

1 and 2 are no problem, I have lots of ideas that fit those criteria, but I almost never have a project that applies to one or more specific geographic communities. The stuff I've worked on, blogging, RSS, podcasting, have all been broadly applied technologies that work in every geographic community. Nothing geographically specific about the stuff I like.

Update: As often happens, writing helped clarify my thinking. Yes, there have been projects I've done that were geographically specific. Starting the Berkman Thursday group was a way of bootstrapping a blogging community in Cambridge MA, as were the first two BloggerCons. If we ever do Hypercamp it will also be geographically specific.

Anyway, I offer my help -- if anyone reading this blog is submitting a proposal, maybe there's some way we can team up. I'm going to need some new projects after the election, which is coming up soon!

BTW, the one project that I have on my long-term plate that I think would be a good fit, were it not for #3, is Future-safe Archives. It's a project best done in cooperation with a university, and with a bit of funding, the idea could likely be sold to one. I regularly get emails from people at various universities who are interested in creating work on the web that has a chance of lasting beyond their lifetime.

Also, I'm curious how the previous Knight projects have been doing. Have any of them gained traction?

A couple of years ago, I posted about the pumpkin carving mastery of Ray Villafane. Ray just emailed to tell me that he'll be on the Food Network show "Challenge" next week, October 26, at 8pm EST, competing for $10k cash. Check our Ray's site for more incredible sculptures (pumpkin and otherwise) and his carving tutorial.
Ray Villafane's pumpkin carvings

Previously on BB:
• Ray Villafane's marvelous carved pumpkins

Diego Stucco is a composer and sound designer who builds interesting objects that both produce sound as well as have an interesting vintage aesthetic. This video shows him discussing the "Typesonic", a keyboard turned piano that lets you create music by excersizing your QWERTY prowess.

Diego Stucco, via RetroThing

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Flavien writes "A team from the Security and Cryptography Laboratory (LASEC) in Lausanne, Switzerland, found 4 different ways to fully or partially recover keystrokes from wired keyboards at a distance up to 20 meters, even through walls. They tested 11 different wired keyboard models bought between 2001 and 2008 (PS/2, USB and laptop). They are all vulnerable to at least one of the 4 attacks. While more information on these attacks will be published soon, a short description with 2 videos is available."

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Here's another clever use of the iPhone to control objects in the real world. We've reported on this kind of thing before here at Make but now there's a kit that will help you build your own version of the iPhone controlled R/C car.

iPhone-Controlled R/C Car

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KentuckyFC writes "The famous Drake equation calculates the number of advanced civilizations in our galaxy right now. But the result is hugely sensitive to the assumptions you make about factors such as the number of habitable planets that orbit a host star, how many of these actually develop life and what fraction of these go onto become intelligent etc. Disagreements about these figures leads to estimates for the number of advanced civilizations ranging from 10^-5 to 10^6. Now an astronomer in Scotland has worked out how to make the calculations more precise so that different theories about the origin of planets, life and civilizations can be compared. His calculations say that the rare-life hypothesis predicts only 361 advanced civilizations in the Milky Way now. However, the so-called tortoise and hare hypothesis predicts 31,573 and the theory of panspermia says that there ought to be 37,964 extraterrestrial civilizations more advanced than our own in the Milky Way."

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While I can sympathize with the concerns that some folks have over Scientology, it did seem like the massive denial of service (DoS) attack against the group put on by "Anonymous" (basically a group of griefers from some online message boards) seemed to go a bit too far (and, yes, I recognize that many griefers think that their whole reason for being is to "go too far"). Now it appears that one of the kids involved in the denial of service attack has been arrested and agreed to plead guilty for the attack, meaning that at least some members of "Anonymous" aren't quite as anonymous as they believed. In the end, the whole thing seems to have done nothing much. It was a nuisance for Scientology, but allowed the group to portray itself as a victim, and certainly didn't do much of anything to slow the organization down.

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The Washington Post has a story picking apart a DARPA contract document to assert that advanced video spying from the sky is on the way. The contract in question was awarded last month and involves indexing video feeds and matching feeds against stored footage. The example given is for an analyst to ask for an alert whenever any real-time Predator feed from Iraq shows a vehicle making a U-turn. "Last month, Kitware, a small software company with offices in New York and North Carolina, teamed up with 19 other companies and universities and won the $6.7 million first phase of the DARPA contract, which is not expected to be completed before 2011. During the Cold War, satellites and aircraft took still pictures that intelligence analysts reviewed one frame at a time to identify the locations of missile silos, airplane hangars, submarine pens and factories, said... an expert in space and intelligence matters. 'Now with new full-motion video intelligence techniques, we are looking at people and their behavior in public,' he said. The resolution capability of the video systems ranges from four inches to a foot, depending on the collector and environmental conditions at the time, according to the DARPA paper."

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This chair-like robot consists of a planter with robotic legs and some circuitry to detect sunlight levels in the room. When the robot finds the brightest spot it scurries on its legs over in that direction in order to give the plant the most exposure. This reminds us a bit of the "Photosynthesis Robot" by FutureFarmers, although this one would probably be a more manic version of the project.

Plant Bot via NeatoRama

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The latest Arduino in the family is the Arduino Duemilanove (which means "2009") and includes 14 digital input/output pins of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs, 6 analog inputs, a 16 MHz crystal, USB connection, power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button. The main difference between this and the last version, the "Diecimila" is that this version automatically selects the power source for the boards, dispensing of the old USB/External power jumpers and it also adds a way of disabling the auto-reset of the board, but includes a solder jumper just in case you need to re-enable it.

Arduino Duemilanove via HackAday

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Adobe has announced the availability of Photoshop Creative Suite 4. Priced at US$699, the CS4 version features a unified tabbed interface, enhanced color correction and non-destructive editing tools. To speed up operations, it features OpenGL support and 64-bit support (although only for Windows users). Along with Photoshop CS4, Adobe has also announced the availability of the entire Creative Suite 4 product family.

There's been a perception among some, that the introduction of certain technologies into the household has made it more difficult for families to communicate. For example, some have complained that kids with mobile phones use them to spend all their time talking to and texting with friends, rather than with their family. However, some new research notes that this is mostly a myth, and families that have mobile phones tend to use them to communicate with each other quite a bit. Of course, now we'll hear people complaining about how this constant contact makes it impossible for kids to make decisions on their own. There's always something to complain about. And, to be fair, not all of the study suggests that all this communicating is a good thing. While people do communicate more with their family members, they're not as satisfied with family leisure time as those who aren't as technology-enabled.

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tsm_sf writes "A recent Slashdot article got me thinking about dead and dying media. I'd like to build a cheap PC with the goal of being able to read as many old formats as possible. Size and power consumption would be design considerations; priority of media formats would be primary. How would you approach such a project?"

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The proposal to create a British giga-database tracking every phone call, text-message, public transit usage, CCTV capture, purchase, educational experience, medical detail, plane or train ride, toll-usage, and other transactions continues to show its absurdity. The Times's David Leppard has noticed that the legislation will also require people who buy mobile phones in the UK to present a passport and have it registered with their number. Note that even in China, throwaway prepaid SIMs are the norm -- the UK proposal makes China look like a bastion of privacy and good government.

Terrorists will just buy phones abroad and roam on them in the UK, of course.

A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say.

The move is targeted at monitoring the owners of Britain’s estimated 40m prepaid mobile phones. They can be purchased with cash by customers who do not wish to give their names, addresses or credit card details.

Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones

The Brokers With Hands on Their Faces blog collects news-pictures of bankers, brokers and other finance types caught mid-face-palm. A sign of the times.

THE BROKERS WITH HANDS ON THEIR FACES BLOG (via Making Light)

See also: Sad Guys On Trading Floors

Heise.de's Kernel Log has a look at the ext4 filesystem as Linus Torvalds has integrated a large collection of patches for it into the kernel main branch. "This signals that with the next kernel version 2.6.28, the successor to ext3 will finally leave behind its 'hot' development phase." The article notes that ext4 developer Theodore Ts'o (tytso) is in favor of ultimately moving Linux to a modern, "next-generation" file system. His preferred choice is btrfs, and Heise notes an email Ts'o sent to the Linux Kernel Mailing List a week back positioning ext4 as a bridge to btrfs.

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Recently at Boing Boing Gadgets, we got our hands on Sony's all-in-one JS desktop and the new MacBooks: they're less serviceable than ever. There was a super-skinny external Blu-ray drive; a plushie Mickey Mouse Transformer; laser-etched coffee beans; and an excellent space-suit crafted for a short movie. John is intrigued by Lumix's tiny cameras with interchangeable lenses, Samsung's digital picture frames that work as mini-monitors too, and a Wiimote-enabled whammy bar. He rejoiced at RPG masterpiece Mother 3's fan-created English language pack. Joel found a fantastic military surplus online store; an easy-to-read set of digital scales; a gorgeous USB interface for guitarists; and an amusing fake ad for a handheld microwave flashlight. Rob watched shadow-trees grow from his flesh; found an automatic accordion; read about face rashes caused by the nickel in cell phones; spotted an RPG in a pedometer; and couldn't stop laughing at Cat vs. Blender Defender. There was an OLED cellphone design; updates on Snow Leopard; a hideous wood-print optical mouse; the 2010 Toyota Prius; and a cocktail MAME cabinet that nearly—nearly—looks good enough for a genteel living room.

KingofGnG points out F-Secure's Q3 2008 security summary, in which its Chief Research Officer Mikko Hypponen proposes establishing an "Internetpol," an international organization empowered to target and root out cybercrime anywhere in the world. Hypponen gives examples of why such a supernational force is needed — and these are not hard to find — but provides few details about how such an outfit could get started or how it would work. He does mention the wrinkle that in some countries malware writing, cracking, spamming, and phishing are not illegal or not prosecuted. Is an Internetpol even possible, let alone practical?

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